 All right. Hello, everyone still here So we're going to talk about real life at work and I'll first like to Have our first panel, which is the product managers to introduce themselves Okay, let's start Okay. Hey guys. My name is Doro. I'm a product manager at Zalora right now my background is actually business studies, but my first job was as a video game tester and That was a really great job actually a great culture at that place as well And that's why I stayed on in that company to become a project manager there and that's where I got exposed to software development the first time and I was talking to a friend of mine at the time who was a product manager and that was a job that I had never heard of And when we exchanged a bit what our roles were I realized that her role actually addressed a lot of the pain points I felt in my own role so she had a lot more to Influence on the product and to choose the problems that she wanted to solve and how she wanted to solve them And I found that really really intriguing Because my company was kind of corporate and also being a tester. You're very downstream, right quality assurance It's kind of the last thing before go live So yeah, I got really curious about it And I looked for openings and I applied and became a product manager and here I am Still at the same company actually after almost five years Thanks, Doro. I'm E1. I'm a product manager at Grapp But how I first got into the product manager role was actually from Shopee So I joined as actually regional ops and I was a lot more involved in risk Management because actually honestly, I would have to say that it has nothing to do with what I studied One thing or another I wanted better opportunities I wanted to go in tech as a non tech person. So I found a position and So happened that when I was working in that team my product manager whom I worked with Was going to go advance his studies like to get an MBA. So he thought that I had all the qualities that Could replace Basically could could do what he was doing. So that's how I got, you know a confidence boost and went for that role And here I am today Thank you. Hi, I'm E-ling from Honest V The most recent project that I worked on was habitat by Honest V Some of y'all might have visited it before and how I got into product management was that I found my way to Silicon Valley and I fell in love with product management. I've never looked back since then So how I found my way to Silicon Valley is a program by NUS to know where they actually post people to You know, take entrepreneurship classes at Stanford and you know, I also get to work at the start up there So that was how I found my way towards product management Yeah, thank you. So let me start Asking the next question for the product managers is you know, how does What does it mean to be a product manager in your company? What do you actually do? And has you know, what kind of skill set do you look for when you are out there hiring for anyone who has no experience? What should they do? So product management is a role that kind of sits at the intersection of technology business and design and Often you come in just having, you know, one of those areas a bit stronger or really a strength and the others still need to be developed When you are in this role or what does it mean to be in at the intersection of it, right? Is that you need to understand those business problems and try to solve them using technology and design? I think that's probably summarized very much in a nutshell Maybe for the second part of the question Yeah, so to build on those answer. So I think you mentioned that you are the intersection as a PM between Tag between your business teams between your country operations teams and a very very important skill that is absolutely necessary Is your people skill? people, communications Basically because as a PM you are the owner of the product you are responsible for how the product performs So it is absolutely necessary for you to be able to adapt and talk to different kinds of people in their language To make sure that the product gets, you know, shipped successfully and performs as intended Yeah, so I think communications is for sure always the quality I look for in any PM candidates So some characteristics that I look for in hiring PM is having an analytical girl mindset and being a problem solver and The third is, you know, just doing what it takes to get shit done So literally, you know, sometimes they are just fighting fires every day and sometimes, you know, you're saying that oh You know, my customers are really loving the product and Day to day it really varies for a product manager and that's why it's really exciting Yeah, thank you. And this panel is really for you guys Unfortunately, we only have 10 minutes for each Role we have now about two questions for the audience. Do you have any question? Raise your hand up high. Yeah, we have one over there. Is there a mic? Yeah, go ahead Thank you for the question. So To repeat that her question was what's the biggest challenge as a PM That you think you face and you don't think anyone else in the industry in the tech industry phase And you know anyone like to share about that? Maybe I can answer this question first So I think I some of the speakers have said, you know, product managers is at the intersection of business You know tech design and that's where there's a lot of gray areas, right? So, you know, where does the line stop? Where do you draw the line? So sometimes one of the challenges is really finding the capacity to focus on The area that you think will have the biggest impact and really getting alignment from all the different teams because All the stakeholders have their different priorities, you know, the data teams once a space to deliver their data Recommendations, you know, and then the design team wants to make their UI UX, you know, improvements So then how do you prioritize? That's the biggest challenge I would say Yeah, totally agree Good summary also and I think maybe communication that you mentioned was, you know an important skill for us I guess to bring everyone on the same page speak everyone's language also to a certain extent You know whether you talk to UX designers and you also need to know your customer Of course as a product manager or your talk tech and you want to at least know high level what you're talking about I think the the challenges. Yeah to communicate well And Actually, I think there are plenty of product management materials online You can definitely go on medium content Asia a ton of books that you can start reading as well So I think a lot of things that actually we're covering now is quite Easy to find online and accessible to everyone but one thing that I want to say about the challenges question They were talking about Because I also just had a couple of screening calls yesterday. So I'm like still fresh from that So I think especially you need to service agent that companies There tends to be a lot of changes all the time be it from business be it from regulations You don't see them coming and it when it come you have to handle it You have to handle any curveball that is thrown at you because for example, you could have a product really developing 70% And then something comes and say hey actually we are doing this You know, this is like this thing just came out yesterday. It's all wrong So I think the challenge actually especially for a PM in Southeast Asia is to be able to handle curveballs really well and That takes I think a fair amount of patience skills obviously communications, but of also a lot of Managing expectations with different kinds of people who definitely don't immerse themselves in product management every day So they also don't or maybe not necessarily familiar with the things that you are facing So as a product manager, you kind of have to be like that all-rounder person To make sure that things Suffer as little as possible due to any of these changes. Thank you so much I think I will move on to the next Section and if you have any question when they get off the stage make sure you grab them All right, so next up we have the web developers Well, I think a lot of you may be able to imagine how that looks like But I think I will still like them to introduce about you know How a day for them is like and what actually excite them in the day and in their role in in this web development role So I'm Nicole. I'm from top works. I'm a software engineer Typical gay will be we start with a scan up So we scan around and we go one round talking about our updates progress and any brokers I think it's the most vital round in the day because you get to know if someone needs help or you know Something that someone else doesn't and also as a team you need to help each other in order to make the product So it's not just about your personal progress. How fast you can finish a story cut So in order to make a product everyone has to be on the same page. Also, I think scanner is really important And it should not just be about I get this I get that but more about like do you need help? So you need to be a bit proactive in Asking and also offering help in order to make the team great Hi, I'm feel from the circus life and as Nicole see the daily stand-up is important for the everyday of the Software engineer life. I agreed on that. So how stand-up have our walk So in the stand-up usually we talk about three things yesterday What had we done today what we are doing and then what will be the blocker of the today? So that every everyone in the stand-up will know that what will be the blocker being a senior how to How to clear the blocker so that the teams will keep moving because we have we are promising for the deliverable outcomes to the PM So from the PM side, they will also want to know that is there any blocker in the team? Well, they affect to the deliverable outcome and then also at the start of the everyday walks We will be looking inside is the blocker if it is a blocker. We will contact to the PM Hey, there is a blocker how to resolve it and after that we will keep progressing on the team Performance ending at the end of the spin. We will achieve our deliverable outcomes Thank you So well, I think for what you know what you require to become a developer or a software engineer Maybe very different from any other role in the tech industry. So And it always seems like there is a very high level of entry That you you need to achieve. So what would be your advice to anyone who has no background and who want to become someone like you You know, what do you think is the hiring process right now? What would be your advice? So a few questions yoga entry process. It actually depend on your own I would say depend on your background and where you come from. So if you're scared really scarring computer science I would say the entry level will not be get hard, but if your career if you're doing a career switch like you went to Like coding Academy and all sorts of get right the inertia would be higher because you're Entering a totally different industry. So there would be more difficult If the CV really matter So in the hiring process, I believe most of the tech company now proceed with a code assignment first So your CV in the Senate matters, but not as much as I would say a traditional job now I guess so you do have to submit your coding assignment It needs to work and also it needs to look good and reusable in order for us to consider you for the next stage So I would say go and get too bogged about your years of experience and CV and just try it out Try to code assignment even if you don't think you are going to get a job because it's a very good practice Yes from my point. So to become a software engineer, we need two types of skill One is called a hard skill another one is called soft scale. So what is hard scale? So that is what we can learn from the university or any kind of the online courses. There will be the hard scale So that is the fundamental so we need the hard scale and another one is what is the soft scale soft scale is a kind of Problem-solving and analytical thinking being a software engineer You are facing to the system who is a really using and there will be a Complexity over there if there is a complexity come at how you will be solving it. That is an analytical skill So that kind of analytical skill is you can grow up along the way in your career So first of all first we have to concentrate on how we can acquire the hard scale So how to best start learning the programming first. So when you can start Doing the simple programming and based on the what is your analytical skill? You can improve yourself to resolve in the Complexity complex complex problem So I might say that to visit as hard and solve is that must have for the software engineer All right. I guess to summarize if you have no experience, but you are learning The CV don't really matter. There's going to be an assignment. So, you know a graduate of computer science And you who has just learned something from cosera you guys are going to go through the same process So don't be afraid if you think that your you know college certificate doesn't count So now I have one more question that I can get the floor to ask Is there anyone who's interested in web development or software engineering who like to ask any question? Great question. So the the question was what is the language that I should start with there is so many out there Okay, so in order your question. So from my side, there is no language preference So first in first if you know the pseudo language, let's see how to write a simple program. That will be a good start So because every programming language we start with the variable Declaration and after the for loop this kind of thing every programming language is the same just a matter of the And then send us different. So just get the visit knowledge of the how to write a simple program and after that that will be your first start So I would say that if you're just scouting out, maybe try a course online Go for the one get teach you how to build a website from scratch making from all the way from planning design Database modeling and such so you really get a few of how the process work and then decide for yourself Do you really like doing this and once you are you acquire the basic skills like what she said, then you move on to Strengthen your basic skill I would always say go and look at the language because there's just too many new tech and language student But most likely go for like hugging your basic like Understand what is a database understand what how can you make something faster? So the theories behind all the language are the same So just apply them as such go and get to focus by the new language because if you keep switching languages to learn You're not going to get very far in the journey. I would say yeah Thank you All right So moving on to our last panel and again if you have more questions once they get off the stage make sure you grab them We have our last panel the the data scientists and I think I would like to start off with the first question to You know tell us more about what you think is unique about data scientists There are many people out there who are working with data in their own ways It could be working, you know with data in Excel. They could be writing sequel, you know They could be called data analysts. So what's unique about data scientists? Okay, probably I do a self introduction first. I'm Roshi from shopping So currently I'm a data scientist focusing on recommendation system in shopping. So regarding the question. What's Unique about data scientists as compared to DA or BA I will say that for DA and BA they are they are finding facts about data But for data scientists, we need to deal with uncertainties Maybe I give a real real life example So for the recommendation system that I've been doing in shopping is like when you land on the product page We need to give a model which we'll recommend related products to you But it's a very like uncertain topic because we can think of different strategies to recommend a product It can be like the items that you recently view so that you will be more interested in it Then it can also be that the products like they say you are viewing a dress And then we can recommend for the high-heeled shoes that matches this dress or we can recommend for the cosmetics Then for another strategy, it can be like we recommend similar products. So for for doing the modeling and The engineering in data science you need to deal with this uncertainty Then maybe I go to DA in in shopping for an example So after we do this recommendation model our DA team will help us to Do the visualization and to compute the metrics about how the more or how good the model performance is So most of the time the metric is well defined So they are basically coming out with algorithms to find how to Most efficiently find the metrics that we want and how can we do an efficient visualization About the model tracking. So that's my thoughts about the difference between DA and DS Hi, hi again. I was part of the previous panel. So just a brief introduction. So I'm Janet So I'm leading the big data and analytics team for Oracle in ASEAN So I think what differentiates or what makes it special, right? So on a day-to-day basis is that you've probably heard about the term like data science is the sexiest job One of the sexiest jobs right now, right? So I think it's really, you know Being in a data science is data science field is more than just the technology skills and and all the You know the tools that you use and the programming and all but it's really about, you know Going and looking deep inside you like what is that vision that you are trying to achieve and what is that output? You know, so if you have I've just probably Just a little bit of sharing about myself, right? So I have this grand vision of you know Being when I was a kid of being able to save lives and contribute to society But unfortunately for me I wanted to become a doctor, but I was afraid of blood So I think I think faster than probably the patient. So there's really no chance for me to become a doctor So I thought like lucky for me. I have this love for numbers, right? And I thought that if I go to the engineering side, then I will have another means of saving lives So that vision was in me throughout, right? So and I thought that being in this data science field with all the advancement in technology, machine learning, artificial intelligence You could do a lot with that good vision inside your heart. You could do into health care You could do maybe even improving Customer experience and all these various industries, right? So again, I think in data science more than the technology itself It's really that grand vision within you of what you want to do and that output that makes it really exciting And once you have all these pieces together I think you know regardless of how difficult writing algorithms are Coding dealing with data cleaning data all these I think with that passion in heart It makes it very Not very easy but easier for you to overcome. So I think that's what makes it special. Yeah Hi, my name is Yan and I'm a data scientist in grab So I'm in the economics team and my team focuses on things like pricing and demand and supply positioning So I think To be a data scientist one makes it special is that other than being good with the data and analysis You also have to be good in modeling As well as formulating a problem such that it can be eventually incorporated into the product or the business And in addition, you probably have to have also have a knowledge on reading pipelines as well as data architecture So it's more of like a full stack thing But on the other hand for data analyst analyst, I think they're very good at Understanding the data and they know about the nuances of the data So whenever I need to look at a new table and if I have questions that actually might go to person And I think in general, they are very good at visualizing and presenting the data to the business so that business users will be able to understand the data and Digest it in bite-sized pieces Thank you. So looks like the business or the data analyst works closer to the business and the data scientists, you know Walk out with you know, I'm certainty and I'm pretty unpredictable stuff, right? So well the next question that I would be curious about is what could be the bigger challenge You think in your role as a data scientist And with that what kind of skill set for anyone who want to work with data who want to come into the data world What kind of skill set do you think they should acquire? To get into this I think the biggest challenge for me is actually customer education Because I find most of my customer there like two extremes one one extreme is they think that AI can do everything So actually we are not the God then it's it's it's very likely that we explore a model for one or two months But it doesn't work. So there is definitely disappointment Then the other extreme is that people think that we are just API users. So They think that it's very similar to software engineering Then so we just basically call API then we are able to do model very quickly if they give us the requirement So I will say that communication is very important and customer education is very important for data science It's not just about technical Maybe just to add I think open-mindedness is one of the very important thing that you you need to Look into data science so so she mentioned that education is one because people tend to think that we are doing magic, right? So everything we can solve everything but as you go deep into the the act of it Right of doing data science and all you will realize that you know every data set is different every industry is different Basically, it's everything is unique So we'd have you need to have that critical thinking and open-mindedness to go into the data science to have that kind of strong will to do it Yeah For me, I think the biggest challenge is to keep learning because there's actually a lot of new technologies coming out every day So you have to actually read for example things website-side medium or our research papers to keep yourself Abraised with the new technologies Thank you Unfortunately, we don't have time but since I'm holding the mic Anyone have a burning question you want to ask the data scientists on stage No one. Yes one question. So I will repeat the question. What's the difference between? Well in definition, what's the difference between data scientists and data engineer? They're right. Yeah, I think it's company specific. So probably like I started with Sharpie first So for us the data engineering, they are doing the data warehouse like maybe their user behavior tables and standard tables every day So they are to basically doing the data aggregation daily then for us when a new model comes in We also need to do data engineering is basically we extract data from those Standard tables then we need to do the feature engineering It which is basically to do the data aggregation pipeline to get the feature that we want in order to go for production So I will say there's overlap between these two teams then Because my previous working experience like the structure is a bit different. So even for the products For the data science team the data engineering pipeline is Done fully by the data engineers. So I will say it's companies of a specific. Yeah If I may just add to that I think the whole data science thinking has now evolved to include various aspects here So one business is one being having some skills in terms of the computer like programming and all and of course the math and statistics So there's actually a fusion of these skills together and at It worked with the customers and all the expectation is not so much now in silos, right? So if you are in the data science field, you are expected to basically understand the end-to-end process of understanding even identifying what data sources you need to look into Given an understanding of the business context, right? So that's a very important thing that you need to understand what business problems you're trying to address And once that's clear then you have to understand each step, right? So from a data engineering data management data handling cleansing Transformation to building the models all the way to communicating the results visualizing it and communicating the results and going back To why it didn't work. So that whole process. I think slowly slowly that is becoming the trend. Yeah So my understanding is that data engineers that generally very good at building ETLs and pipelines and they're good at architecture So I'll just give you an example. So we work quite closely with The data engineers and data analysts. So for example, we want to production lies a new table So for example, I'm grab food is a relatively new business for us And so when we are trying to design the scheme of the tables, we actually work very closely with the data engineers So they can understand our needs and how we want to use the data. Yeah Thank you. All right. So we have come to the end of real life at work While they are on stage Anyone have question keeping them on stage you can just come forward Have a good lunch and I'll see you in the afternoon workshop